


Blanch

by orphan_account, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bondage, M/M, Sensation Play, insertion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 02:23:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1101256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his mind's eye, he sees two pictures overlaid.</p><p>	The first are the victims - four total - robbed slowly of all the senses they represented. In a deliberate order. Eyes, blinded. Eardrums, perforated. Mouths, scalded. Smell, scoured out with caustic soda.</p><p>	"Their killer gave them a last of everything," he says, aloud, hearing Hannibal moving behind him - and his own voice. "Like a communion."</p><p>	A slip of taste pressed to the tongue, a whiff of something sweet.</p><p>	But Will can also - more faintly - see himself, now. As Hannibal must.</p><p>	Hands bound separate and careful to the headboard, curled around the wooden slats to ground himself.</p><p>  <i> A little Christmas treat. PWP, with a very faint hint of reasoning to get the boys in bed in the first place. Blanching is a cooking term for giving something an ice bath in the middle of or just after cooking. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Blanch

"Tell me where your mind has gone," Hannibal requests. 

It's quiet and polite, penetrating Will's mind through the darkness and quiet surrounding him. Like a superconductive cocoon sending him back three days into his own thoughts.

"I-" he starts, and then Will Graham knows that's wrong in the heavy silence. He shifts his wrists where they are pinned and feels the soft cords around them as steel. "I blind them to give myself power."

He continues as he started, fabric pressing his eyelids closed. The knot had been careful - tied at the back of his head to omit his hair. It is tight enough that blinking into the blindfold catches his lashes and folds his eyelids uncomfortably, so Will has stopped. Keeps his eyes closed.

"They will never see anything new after me," he continues, and though his own eyes are closed, the brush of fabric feels like the cool press of a metal pendulum.

In his mind's eye, he sees two pictures overlaid.

The first are the victims - four total - robbed slowly of all the senses they represented. In a deliberate order. Eyes, blinded. Eardrums, perforated. Mouths, scalded. Smell, scoured out with caustic soda.

"Their killer gave them a last of everything," he says, aloud, hearing Hannibal moving behind him - and his own voice. "Like a communion."

A slip of taste pressed to the tongue, a whiff of something sweet.

But Will can also - more faintly - see himself, now. As Hannibal must.

Hands bound separate and careful to the headboard, curled around the wooden slats to ground himself.

The blindfold is black and silk, ends trailing stark against his shoulders - bare and vulnerable to the soft sliding over them.

Hips, raised. Body open, exposed. Accessible.

Maybe Will Graham's mind isn't as stuck as he had thought it to be. Though he had woken every night with a killer's convictions in his mind, having come even this far he can still see himself.

They had ended the case, but verses of reasoning still overtook Will, captured him away from speaking in class, from repairs or tending his dogs. But, perhaps, it wasn't so drastic as to call for this.

Will shifts his hips against the soft wedge driving them up, holding him on his knees, and debates calling it all off.

Somehow, he knows he could - until Hannibal's hands close warm and slick-gloved over his ears, deafening them to everything but the rushing sound of his own blood.

Trapping in the last question he had been asked. The one Will had not answered, fully. 

Will licks his lips and sighs. 

“I don’t know.” He replies honestly. For a moment, Hannibal doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything or touch him beyond keeping all sound at bay. Then, there is a gentle stroke of thumbs against his scalp, just under where the blindfold lays laced, first the flat pads of the fingers, then the hint of the outline of a nail, through the gloves, but still gentle.

Will’s heart hammers against his ribs, the echo throbbing down his spine, against his skin as though to shatter it.

“I don’t know!” he says again, louder against the silence forced on him, “I don’t… know why he allowed them touch, and didn’t numb it.”

The answer is honest enough, though Will can't even hear his own voice, save in the dull way it touches him as sound, echoes through his own chest, works in his throat. Hannibal eases gently back after a moment, but it still leaves him blind.

Hannibal makes a considering noise, moving behind Will again, and when he speaks, his voice is further way. This would be more real, if he plugged Will's ears and left them - but Hannibal's voice is is his best tool. 

A lead, with a clip at the end, Will thinks. The sound of latex gloves covering Hannibal's hands to the wrist like the sound of the metal catch when he slipped it through the ring on a dog collar. That was what Sound was, for Hannibal.

"Touch is harder to neutralize," Hannibal leads - further down the rabbit hole, Will supposes. "The other senses are centered around the respective sensory organs but skin is a vast expanse."

The sounds of him leave for a moment, leaving Will's thoughts interrupted with the strain of listening, but he gets no sign of return. Hannibal had shed his shoes somewhere out of earshot and moved silent on sock feet back to the bedside, and the finger that slides illustratively over each jut and dip of Will's spine is cooler than his own skin. 

"How would you do it?" Hannibal asks, calling for Will's thoughts again, unerringly landing on the issue.

Will finds himself shifting up into the hands against him, just to feel a connection to something. Hannibal was right, neutralizing something like touch was a near-impossible task. It was rare sensation would be lost entirely, even after a stroke, after accidents and nerve damage. The killer would have had to go so much deeper, physically, to take this sense away.

“I wouldn’t,” he answers finally, fingers flexing against the headboard where they hold as Hannibal turns his hand to draw a knuckle up his back now, the same path but a wholly different feeling – this is harder, les sensitive, in turn, to what Will feels. It’s a touch of both indifference and intimacy, and he wonders if the two are really so separate. 

“I would allow the sense to be overwhelmed,” he continues, voice returning slowly to the low monotone Will uses to narrate his empathy moments, “Let them concentrate so hard on one sense that all feeling would stun the system, a feedback loop.”

Hannibal’s hand leaves his skin and Will finds himself arching back to seek it, shoulders tight a moment before relaxing. 

“How would you do it?” he asks after a moment, tone softer again, his own, if strained.

Hannibal makes a considering noise, but his answer isn't long in coming. "I wouldn't."

The answer is a cop-out, but Will understands , at least, that they aren't here because Hannibal wakes considering it in the middle of the night. The touch eases over Will's back, over the lifted curve of his ass and leaves him shifting - toward or away he's not sure- and then soothes down the backs of his thighs.

Hannibal presses glove-clad fingers into the private spaces behind Will's knees, feeling the soft skin as if to see if he is ticklish there.

"I'm here for you, not for the man you caught," Hannibal continues. "This isn't about recreating what he did, it's about giving you a ladder to climb up out of it again."

He pauses, and for a moment Will thinks he's about to ask about Trust - ask a question Will can't really lie to answer, and one that he doesn't think he knows the real truth about yet anyway. Instead, Hannibal asks something different.

"Would you prefer it if I blocked your ears?" 

“Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of getting me out of this?” Will replies flatly, he gets nothing more than silence in answer and lets out a harsh breath. He had accepted the offer, had allowed this, had reached out for something he wasn’t even sure how to put into words and had gotten it, without question.

He shouldn’t be rude.

“Your voice grounds me.” He admits at length, earning nothing for that either. Hannibal seems to be either completely still or just gone.

“Yes.”

The reply isn’t startling so much as unexpected, and Will jerks, heart surging to his throat a moment before migrating back down to where it belongs.

“But the purpose of the exercise is to get you to return yourself to a place that is solely yours, Will, the only person who can do that is you.” He lets the words filter, watches Will shift around and speaks again when Will parts his lips to. 

“I can be your anchor when you are yourself again, Will. Ground you in a reality you belong in rather than support you in a foreign one.” Hannibal flexes his fingers idly, just once, and Will concentrates on the sound of leather. “But if it helps you, I can leave that sense as yours for the time being.”

Will considers, breathing even for the moment and mind dangerously close to tilting into another cycle of endless analysis and dangerous planning.

“Please.” He says.

“Very well,” Hannibal answers, moving again.

Will never feels his weight settle wholly on the bed, but his hands slide over Will’s ribs with a firmness that doesn’t threaten to tickle, that soothes almost in the same way Will did when he had a nervous animal. The sort of dog that felt jumpy in the thunder and needed something pressing in contact to reassure it. Then they pass, sensation dulled by the latex, over his chest and down his belly.

He pulls it in with a gasp, shifts his hips over the wedge and feels his body respond to the touches. Pulse - sped. Skin - bumped and aware. Electric. Will can feel the small hairs standing up on the back of his neck where they are clipped closer than the rest of his head, raising in goose-bumps that are somewhere between fear and arousal. 

Hannibal touches him until it is almost reassuring - long slow strokes that start at the base of his neck and stripe his back in fading warmth, or slide down his shoulders. Tracing the full line of his sides down his hips, and then up again. Fingertips find the intimate places on the insides of his thighs, nudging his knees further apart while Hannibal follows the creases of Will’s legs, the backs of his knuckles against his balls. 

They, Will is aware - because he is blind and bound and has little else to take up the vast room of his focus - feel heavy and ugly. For Will, it is dark, but he is aware that the room is light - that Hannibal can see perfectly clearly every shifting reaction of his body. 

When Will no longer flinches at even the most intimate touch - pressing behind his balls against his perineum, applying pressure in a way Will hadn’t thought could feel good but it does when Hannibal rocks his fingers there, and then resumes moving, but he skirts wide at touching Will’s cock. Instead, the next touches are slick, thick-sticky with something that slides against him - but it isn’t cold. The temperature is warm, or it seems that way against his skin, as Hannibal strokes it in small circles around where Will opens, until his teeth stop jittering together nervously.  
“This isn’t going to hurt in the same way,” Hannibal explains - it’s not a warning, not exactly. That would imply a chance to stop this and Will isn’t sure that hasn’t passed already. “But it will be very difficult to ignore. That’s the point.”

His tone is smooth and hypnotic. “The waves will close above your head like Jonah of old, William,” Hannibal tells him. “Won’t it be a relief to discover you can swim?” 

Will doesn’t know what that means, feels his mind is so many places at once that not much will bring it back, he’s too scattered. Sex, he supposes, will numb him enough to forget for a while, to float on something pleasant and distracting before that hum fades from his mind too and he comes back to this.

“I’ve never felt like I was drowning,” Will murmurs, tone matching Hannibal’s unconsciously, just as smooth and warm and calm, “Just that I had no shore to reach for.”

Hannibal doesn’t reply beyond a quiet hum; understanding perhaps, or simply acknowledgment of having Will’s attention. And he does, all of it that the man can give with his limited senses and self-awareness.

Hannibal stretches him slowly, as he always has. William had wondered, at first, how they could maintain something like professionalism and still be here, still come this far.

He needn’t have worried. Hannibal seemed to shut the door on this the instant it was done. He could swing this factor about himself open and closed as easily and smoothly as he did the various doors to his office. Even if Will had wanted to ask, it never quite seemed the right time.

Will can’t see anything, but he can feel how his body stretches only reluctantly, given that he has not been touched in any way that’s familiar prior - but it stretches anyway, gives as Hannibal takes. Only two fingers at first, and he can almost feel the texture of Hannibal’s fingertips - not so much calloused as simply strong, through the thin gloves. 

He gives a jerk when the first touch curls against his prostate, the ties rattling the headboard, his knuckles knocking against the firm, flat wooden slats they’re anchored to. It’s almost too sensitive, with his nerves such as they are. Hannibal soothes with a sound and doesn’t repeat the motion, just works him open with two fingers, three... further, in fact, than Will thinks he has before.

Sinking into it, a little, Will focuses where his attention can - on what little he has to hold to. Hannibal’s patience has steadfastly refused to ever wear thin. Will isn’t sure he could handle it if he ever saw the end of Hannibal’s patience. Something about him in this setting makes him uncomfortable. 

The fingers withdraw, and there are long moments of silence to follow, of nothing. Will tightens his grip on the headboard to feel something solid and real that he can grasp.

“What-?” he starts.

The cold is sudden, shocking, absolute. At first, Will feels perhaps that he is being pierced - his body tenses, his hands scrabble at the headboard and his voice tears free of him in surprise before he realizes it is only cold - frozen metal or even ice, and it is only the difference in temperature between it and his body that screams alive in his mind. 

For a moment it's so cold it feels scalding, the sensation inverted in extremes, and Will gasps.

"Tell me where your mind has gone, Will," comes the soothing voice behind him, unchanged despite the surge of discomfort - Will can't quite call it pain - still grounding him, keeping this as his reality.

"It hasn't," it's honest. For the first time in weeks Will is right here, where he should be, aware and present and in his own mind, not on a case now closed, not a killer that sits ill in Will's skin as he sits easily in theirs.

There's a hum behind him but the overwhelming cold doesn't ease. Will grips the headboard tighter, twists, finds his efforts not enough or just blatantly ignored.

"Hannibal," he swallows, the sound thick and clicking in his ears; loud. Despite the discomfort, the cold isn't actually painful.

The response he gets is the sound of gloves parting from skin. From memory, he knows that Hannibal inverts one over the other, so they are both inside out and he can keep his hands clean.  
There is pressure still on whatever's intruding, and it must be braced in place, because Will's body pushes against it almost instinctively - though not with an abundance of force. Will counts to ten pushing air through his teeth and tries to relax. He can feel trickles of frigid water trailing down his thighs, over his balls, some even clinging to his belly - ice then.

Hannibal gets a new pair of gloves situated - or whatever it was he was doing, Will admits to a few moments of being utterly lost in sensation - before he goes totally numb to sensation from cold. The steady pressure eases off of him, and then Hannibal thrusts it gently into him, the angle benign.

It's an odd sensation, the cold chilling where it touches, the pace slow enough to let enough sensation come back between motions that he can feel the very edge of cold pressing forward... slowly, deeper into him, feel the trickle of water increasing down his legs. The motion makes it bearable, helps still the shivers that take him, and that's interesting too - his muscles drawing tight outside of his control. 

"Cold is one of the things you can't control instinctive reactions to," Hannibal tells him, his tone calm and slow as the pace he's thrusting at, and on the turn of his words he changes the angle, his tone turning curious though he isn't asking a question - he's waiting to see how the ice feels sliding against Will's prostate. "It's subconscious - shivers, chattering teeth. Your veins constrict, your body draws blood away from extremities to keep your vitals working."

So it was instinct that Hannibal had wanted to bring out in Will, something completely out of his control, involuntary and vital at once. He wonders, again, where his mind is and finds it, again, right here, currently honing in on the one spot in his body that is both frozen and on fire simultaneously. He tries to shift away and find himself immediately missing the contact.

It will be very difficult to ignore.

He makes another sound, low and groaning and almost animalistic, but it’s not needy.

“You could’ve doused me in water,” he grits out, turning his head to press against his arm as he feels the ice drive against his prostate again, body shaking from the sensation as well as the temperature, though his skin feels like it’s on fire. “Covered me in ice, why this?”

It’s almost too much, now, with the way his skin is numb to sensation but deeper, still, he feels everything. Will whines, low and long and pushes back.

“I would have been addressing another issue, had I done that.” Hannibal says calmly, his voice still that soft, soothing thing that Will has come to associate with sessions and relaxed conversation, “You do not have trouble with touch, you are fixated upon it.”

He removes the object from Will and the other gasps, suddenly empty and almost uncomfortably warm without it. The water sliding down his skin has formed damp patches below his knees and Hannibal regards them, addresses his next words there as one hand comes up, gloved and hot, to gently press into Will again.

“You had lost your ability to calibrate your mind, what is inside of you, not the physical world you were in. your perception, Will, was not your problem. Your inability to set aside a mentality of another, the inner workings of something that doesn’t belong within you is what drove you here. And it is the inside of you that I am reminding you to change.”

He curls his fingers up and circles the gland within Will until the other groans with it, loud, almost angry sounds of pleasure.

"You have such an ability to empathize," Hannibal continues, low, beneath the sounds Will finds he can't help but make, and he feels utterly scoured free of any embarrassment at them. The blindfold is on him, but he feels curiously as if it indicates what Hannibal is willing to suggest he never saw.

"But you never quite turn it inward."

Will can feel his body responding again, the heat returning. Blood vessels expanding again - going right back where all his blood had rushed before, and it's dizzying and sudden. He gasps and tries not to chuckle bitterly when he feels himself get hard again - reminds himself that's a reaction, too. 

"I know how I feel," Will says, and he intends the tone to be calm but it goes sharp and defensive instead, and Hannibal doesn't answer directly. Instead he draws another groan from Will, and then draws back, withdraws his fingers entirely, and traces lines in the remains of wet over Will's skin.

"If I ask you to tell me how you feel," Hannibal says at length, amused with himself. Will finds his teeth bared against the blackness, and supposes his expression must be an ugly, desperate thing, and he shoves his face down against the mattress.

"Lazy," Will hisses, but it's spoiled by how dry his mouth is, by how he has to swallow around the taste of his thoughts - scattered, desperate to continue. "Lazy psychology."

"No effort at all," Hannibal chuckles, and slides the flat of his palm along William's hard cock, and shifts off the bed, as if to leave him there, just like this

"How do you feel, Will?" he asks, tone gentle, more serious than the teasing of before, waiting to gauge the answer by Will's voice, the depth of meaning in his words. The other just groans, pushing back against a hand that isn't there. For a while, Will says nothing, just twists his hands in their restraints, arches his hips up off the support under them, buries his face in the soft duvet under him until his panting eases to bearable.

"Burning," he admits, muscles bunching in his shoulders as he shifts again and Hannibal watches, eyes at half-mast and directed at the furrow of muscle down the middle of Will's back as he moves.

"Hungry."

Hannibal's lips twitch and he tilts his head, fingers flexing in the latex gloves as he considers the hunger Will means, how it seamlessly twines with the previous word to create a whole new meaning to both.

"Present." Will swallows, turning his blind eyes to where he hopes Hannibal is, "I'm right here."

Hannibal touches him again, gently - nearly with reverence, and Will wishes he could read the man's eyes right now, see the expression on Dr. Lecter's face - somehow he knows it would be the Dr. Lecter face, and not the softer expression Hannibal wears when he's in the kitchen.

It's always the quiet reserve when he's measuring a decision - measuring Will as a decision, in this case, and a shiver passes down Will's spine following Hannibal's fingers. 

"I should have thought far enough ahead for hot wax," Hannibal muses at last, and then Will feels his weight settle on the bed, feels Hannibal's knees settle beside his own and he's surprised to feel bare skin - he hasn't, ever before. 

Will leans back into it, to feel the slide of skin against skin, for more contact. Hannibal seems warm, comforting against him. He doesn't offer to take the blindfold off, even when Will tips his head back, as if to see. Nor does he press where Will wants him to, instead curling a hand around Will's erection and just sharing contact.

"Could you stand the mess?" Will goads, voice tight. 

Hannibal makes a non-committal noise and traces the thick vein with his thumb before circling the head of Will's cock in an almost lazy gesture. Will Graham is fascinating, a creature of emotion and impulse, not calculation and calm. He watches as Will shudders from the sensation, curling his shoulders forward and pressing his hips back in the same movement, sliding warm through Hannibal's hand.

The mess was... certainly a factor, a major reason he was feeling the skin of Will's thighs and cock with his bare hands for the first time now. The thought of sullying the sheets more than they already are makes his lips curl in an expression of gentle disgust. And yet, he would be loading them into the wash once Will was free to move again, regardless of more stains or less. And Will paints such a pretty picture.

"Are you asking me to?" he says at length, watching Will still in his movements to consider the words, the younger man's jaw working before he swallows, obviously fighting the urge to answer truthfully, but desperate enough to want to. As little as Will knows of Hannibal's intentions, the other hasn't exactly been forthcoming with his own.

"Yes." Will says finally.

Hannibal surveys the picture laid out before him, settled deep and comfortable as possible in the bed. He can see how Will's hands have curled against the wooden slats and gone still, feel the way he's holding his breath, and the fine trembles in his muscles as he continues to work his fingers over Will's length - his skin feels warmer than Hannibal is used to, catches more against his bare fingertips. 

It's almost hypnotic.

When he has done considering, Hannibal shifts back and Will makes a hungry noise to give truth to his earlier statement - low in his chest, his body bare save for the slash of black fabric sliding over his shoulders with each motion of his head. Hannibal strokes himself to hardness, enjoying the picture presented, given freely for his asking.

"Should I return your sight," Hannibal asks, but the tone is nearly rhetorical, and he does not allow Will time enough to answer before he lines up, pushes in slow, and has to pause - Will is still cool internally, and he has to let out a breath to steady himself, to wait for Will to warm to him.

Will's words are stolen, crushed into incoherence by the unexpected breach and the almost painful feeling of fullness and heat. And then Hannibal stops, and Will feels his entire body shake again, this time from how hot it feels, how alive, how completely unlike the frozen indifference of before. If that had meant to ground him, this was cementing the memory into his mind, building a new one.

Positive reinforcement.

Will groans, teeth gritted and back bowed, and feels Hannibal push a little further, achingly slowly. By the time he's fully in, Will is shaking again, skin covered in goose-bumps, hands trembling where they hold. It's overwhelming, still without sight, without - in essence - hearing or taste, his sense of smell already filled with the smell of Hannibal, his sheets, the room, the subtle spicy smell he can never place, that comes out of no bottle, but that always lingers around him.

He only realizes he's making incoherent, pleasured sounds - whimpers, if he's not generous with himself - when Hannibal shushes against his ear, leaning low over Will's body as if to crush the sound out of him. 

It's the most contact they've had, Will thinks, and he braces his hands and pushes back into it, to have the feel of Hannibal's body against him, the novelty of it. 

Hannibal shifts over him, and then reaches forward and curls his hand under Will's chin, lifts him some to change the angle before he begins to move, fingers curled gently around Will's throat until he becomes aware of his own pulse against Hannibal's fingertips, of how the pressure seems to increase with every forward motion of Hannibal's hips. 

Will feels Hannibal's breath stirring his hair near his temple, drifting warm against his cheek, and then contact, through the thick band of the blindfold. He does not thrust so much as roll his hips, moving deep and deeper in a slow pace that warms them both slowly, that speeds Will's pulse but does not race it, the way that the ice had earlier. 

Neither speak, there's just the sounds of their breathing, Will's faster just enough to fall into sync only once every dozen breaths, the feeling of heat spreading warm through them both as the cold had punished Will so much earlier. He arches his back and feels Hannibal's fingers turn to accommodate the new position, his middle finger pressed up just under Will's chin, palm supporting his throat, thumb just behind his jaw. It's possessive, dangerously so, and Will doesn't think more on it, not right then.

The change in angle sparks only newer sensations of warmth inside Will, makes him bend and twist in Hannibal's hand, under his weight. The man murmurs something Will isn't even sure is in English, and then he pushes in harder and holds, just keeping Will steady as he breathes against him, head turned just enough for rough, warm lips to press against Will's damp hair.

He remembers Hannibal's words, from what feels like months ago now, in his office, when he had told Will that he was his gauge, his paddle in all of this. It had taken a while to believe it, and now the knowledge was unshakeable. He swallows, the sound a gentle click, and seems enough to set Hannibal driving into him again, still a rocking rather than thrusting, but deeper now, harder, enough to send sparks behind Will's eyes, even bound.

Will doesn't quite have time to wonder if this changes anything, if Hannibal will close the door on this as easily as any of his earlier proposals. The thought forms, sticks, and then fades, unanswered by his own mind. 

Will can hear his own voice gone soft on vowel sounds, his mouth and throat open to drink air and push it out again in shameless encouragement, into the black void of the world. It feels easy and comfortable, and he knows if he could see, it would have closed his mouth. 

As it is, he's deeply aware of the slow build, each individual ratchet that builds his muscles tenser and tenser, the sensation curling somewhere between his tailbone and his dick and holding like a knot. He can feel it drawing, like a long string sliding - or like pushing his fingers along the edge of a right angle, seeking a corner.

Release isn't exactly a surprise, but he's so ready for it that he gasps it out as he tips, clutches hard at the headboard and feels his body tense, feels the sensation twist, and then he almost loses track of how long the spooling, pouring sensation draws out of him as he cums. 

He only finds himself minutes later, muscles soft and yielding, and he feels pliant. He is aware of Hannibal's breath on his cheek, of a faint pressure on his throat before Hannibal seems to remember himself and it turns to a slow, steadying stroke of skin on skin, before Hannibal draws back.

"Did you-?" Will asks, breathless, because he hadn't been aware enough. xz

Hannibal doesn't answer him, not directly. 

"You're drifting," he observes, soft, fingers in Will's hair and then toying with the knot on his blindfold. "Have you gone back out to sea, or does your mind stay in familiar waters?" 

Will sighs, turning into the touch, seeking it like a cat.

“I know who I am,” he murmurs, licking his lips and wondering if once the blindfold is removed he will regret his decision. Hannibal allows a pause, gentle nails against Will’s scalp, until he continues.

“It’s late,” he says, unsure of the time and unwilling to ask, “I am in Baltimore, Maryland. My name is Will Graham.”

There’s a pause, Hannibal’s hand stills in Will’s hair, and then the knot is loosened, the blindfold slides down Will’s nose until he shakes his head a little and it slides to settle around his neck loosely. Gentle fingers move through Will’s hair, settling it loose and damp against his scalp where the bind had interrupted the smooth flow, and then leave again.

He has to blink, even in the low light the room presents, until his pupils contract to the point where the light is no longer painful, and Hannibal moves off the bed behind him, finds a dry towel somewhere to clean him gently with, and Will relaxes slowly, waits for Hannibal to untie his hands and then finally he feels able to uncurl his fingers from their lax grip against the slatted headboard.

When he turns, Hannibal has somehow found a way to re-clothe himself three quarters of the way, though his sleeves are turned up, and Will can see his bare feet peeking from beneath the expertly tailored cuffs of his slacks. 

Somehow, it doesn't leave Will feeling naked - he supposes he couldn't feel any more so than he had when he'd walked in, the perplexities of touch still in his mind. Hannibal settles on the bed next to him, eyes heavy and dark with his own lowered eyelids.

"You've never asked before," he observes, but he does not reach to touch. Will can see him beginning to close the door - as he was trying to help Will to learn how to do. Hannibal's professionalism is a shield, Will understands suddenly. A coping mechanism that cools the heat in his hands, the need to control the exterior - not always possible.

"I wasn't really sure how it'd be received," Will answers, feeling boneless and permissive of the eye contact - and too tired to look away before he learns more about Hannibal than he's sure he wants to, even as the other man's eyes slowly close to him, the warm depths difficult to plumb. Will reaches to reclaim his glasses at last.

Hannibal hums his answer, supposing the rest to be self evident, and his eyes steal to the wet mess of sheets for half a second to betray where his own thoughts have caught, snagged as surely as Will's do when he finds himself too deep within a case, and Will could laugh.

He catches a hand in Hannibal's undone waistcoat, to see his concern transfer to thoughts of wrinkles in need of pressing out, and Will pulls his lips back from his teeth, tilting his head to place the rims of his glasses in the middle of his line of sight. "Do you need any ice, Hannibal?"

The brown eyes narrow, something dangerous behind them before that passes away, slipped behind the shutters Hannibal expertly closes. 

“I have no use for it.” He replies, pointedly directing his eyes to where Will’s hand holds him. 

“A shower, however,” he murmurs, tone lilting just slightly into the one Will knows is meant for him; not sessions, or dinners, or calculated diagnoses. “Would not go amiss.”

He extricates himself from Will’s grip carefully and stands, watches as the man’s hand drops to the bed and stays there, gently curled still. His eyes linger, lower lip curving in over his teeth before he exhales slowly and turns for the bathroom.

“For either of us.” He adds, and when he enters the bathroom and turns on the light, he leaves the door open for Will.

**Author's Note:**

> A very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all! We won't have anything for you next week, I'm afraid, but sometime shortly into the new year we'll have some more Tristahad for you.  
> Thanks for keeping us company this year!
> 
> Warm wishes for a happy holiday and the best of everything in the new year. You guys are awesome. :)


End file.
